Cast your vote in this year’s 40 Under 40 People’s Choice, and show the business work what game-makers have to offer! Two prolific Perth developers are included in this year’s listing, Dr Kate Raynes-Golide and Vee Pendergrast, who you may remember from such awards as MCV Pacific’s Game Changers.

As this is the People’s Choice, it is the nominations of individuals such as yourself that affects the final outcome; so read up on the developer profiles below to see why they are such great business folk, then SUBMIT YOUR VOTE before 5pm, Fri 12 January! The winner will be announced at the 2018 40 Under 40 Gala Awards on Wed, 7 March 2018.

Vee Pendergrast Stirfire Studios CEO

“After sixteen years in mobile telecommunications, Vee Pendergrast made the leap in 2016 to pursue a fulltime career in videogame and VR development. She had co-founded Stirfire Studios in 2010 and has gradually grown the business to the bustling studio it is now and was instrumental in the launch of its titles Freedom Fall, and Symphony of the Machine.

Named as one of MCV Pacific’s Top 30 Women in Games in 2017, Vee brought the company to its attempt at an IPO in July 2017, which is a rarity for Australian videogame companies. Vee’s ambition is to keep the company producing qualities titles and growing their portfolio of internal IPs and services work.”

Kate Raynes-Goldie, Playup Perth Founder & Director

“As a leader of change and innovation, my career has been characterized by a willingness to step into unknown situations and take risks to accomplish what others don’t see as possible. Over the past 4 years, I have advocated for the WA games and creative innovation sector, part of a $150bn global industry.

My leadership has resulted in increased cohesion and professionalization of the sector, bringing jobs and opportunities to WA. As a result of my work, the WA Government included the sector in its New Industries Fund election announcement. As the Director of Playup Perth, my goal is to see WA producing 20% of Australian games by 2020, up from today’s 7%.My goal for the next 5 years is to enable young people to thrive in the future of work. To accomplish this, I have recently launched the Future Human Academy, and its pilot program, Future Ready Teens.”

So we would like to invite you, dear community, to join us in celebrating the year that was on Friday, Dec 8th. This is a casual event for all game-makers; come along and say hello, meet new people and have some fun!

Other Info: Light nibbles will be supplied, but BYO refreshments (alcohol or otherwise); a drinks fridge is available onsite.

♿ Accessibility: This venue is not wheelchair accessible, due to steps at each entrance. Volunteers are available to assist in moving mobility scooters or wheelchairs over these threshold, but we understand that this is not an optimal situation. We apologise for the inconvenience, and efforts will be made in future to better accomodate all community members.

This is the very start of this game, and so together with the team you will have full creative control to make the game you want to make. We want to bring something new to the zombie genre, rather than the same old thing that’s been done to death.

You should be a fan of zombies – so you’ll know what makes zombies great, and also what’s been done so many times before that it’s time to do something else. We’ll discuss our current ideas for the game in more detail during the interview process, so you can get a better feel for whether this is the right project for you.

If you’re interested you can head on over to the Game Designer listing and Writer listing on the Binary Space website. Once you’ve done that, apply by sending an email the Binary Space team at jobs [a] binaryspacegames.com and include:

Links to online examples of your work (could be videos, or playable games);

If you have a portfolio of several projects, point out a couple that you are most proud of, or that you think are most relevant to this new zombie game;

#CTRLDEV is a professional game development chat with international industry leaders. Two panel discussions will focus on the technical and career aspects of working in the games industry, to complement the narrative and storytelling discussions of The Game Changers series at the 2014 Perth Writers Festival.

The Indie Session, all about getting an independent studio off the ground, and what it takes to make a game that can stand out with only a small number of developers.

The Studio Session, with discussions about finding jobs in a larger company, studio culture, and the production pipeline involved when working with internationally renowned and critically acclaimed franchises.

Both panel talks will have substantial time dedicated to Q&As from the audience, as well as a refreshments break in between.

Initially, we’d just make the same recommendation: “Post it to the PIGMImailing list!” After all, it’s the anarchic cultural heart of the Perth indie game development scene and home to all kinds of community discussion.

Then we thought… maybe people want to see profiles of other members, and maybe they also want persistent threads that they can update and keep current, and maybe there is something else we can offer.

We’ve been testing the forums internally for a few weeks, assigning moderators, and making plans to keep them interesting. Here’s what we’ve come up with:

Minh will moderate the Jobs board, a place for people to advertise jobs (paid and unpaid) and look for work

Rich will moderate the Challenges board, where we will issue various game development challenges to the community!

We’ll also have General Chat and Games categories for discussion and posting of games (including works-in-progress).